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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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By THE SAME AUTHOR. 



Spirit ant) Xxfe: 

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. 

Twelve Discourses. 



" Strong in the ethical appeal, direct in statement, 
based on evident reasons, made noble by an ardent 
faith in the worth of man and the immanence of 
deity, and free from vainglory of scholastic, casuis- 
try."— Boston Post. 



Vellum Cloth, $1,00 

FORDS, HOWARD & HULBERT, 
New York. 



Olb Mine: 

^ mew JSottles. 



AMORY H. BRADFORD. 



OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES 



Some Elemental Doctrines in 
Modern Form 



BY 

AMORY H. BRADFORD, D.D. 

Author of " Spirit and Life,'* etc. 



%'i'^'^- 



NEW YORK 

FORDS, HOWARD & HULBERT 

1892 






Copyright in 1892 

By Amory H! Bradford 



Contents. 



I. The Living God 3 

II. The Holy Trinity 21 

III. What is Left of the Bible 43 

IV. The Immortal Life 65 



I. 

THE LIVING GOD. 



" The being of God has not its foundations in the life of human- 
ity : but humanity has its foundations in the life of God." — MuL- 
FORD's Republic of God. 

" To Thee we rise, in Thee we rest, 
We stay at home, we go in quest, 
Still Thou art our abode. 

The rapture swells, the wonder grows. 
As full on us new life still flows 
From our unchanging God." 

T. H. Gill, 

" Eternal Light ! Eternal Light ! 

How pure the soul must be, 

When, placed within thy searching sight, 

It shrinks not, but with calm delight 

Can live and look on Thee ! " 

Thomas Binney. 

" Of the divine life itself there are no differing dispensations . . . 
Moreover, the divine attitude toward man was the same before 
the coming of our Lord as afterward. The dispensation which 
we call Christian, while it is the special, is not the only dispensa- 
tion of grace. In its largest meaning the Christian dispensation 
is not limited to any time. — God i7i His World. 

" And Simon Peter answered and said : Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the Living God." — Matthew xvi. i6. 



L 

The Living God. 

But why the livhtg God ? Because, in the 
minds of many, God is practically dead : He is a 
name, or a force, or a Being who once was near 
to the earth, but who has departed, and has no 
more interest or care for humanity ; a Being who 
walked with the patriarchs, talked with the 
prophets, did marvelous works in apostolic times, 
but who has now retired into awful and unap- 
proachable mystery, if not into inaction and 
death. There are two classes to whom God is 
practically dead — materialists, who believe in no 
spirit pervading the universe, who see nothing 
but matter and force working in accordance with 
unintelligent laws toward an end which must be 
death ; and those who have a clear and strong 
faith in the God of the Hebrews, the God who 
manifested himself in Jesus Christ, who inspired 
the Apostles, and who continued in the world 
until the Bible was completed — and then disap- 
peared forever. They do not say that he has 



4 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

gone forever, but their theories concerning re- 
h'gion imply that so far as he is related to the 
universe, and especially to men, he might as well 
have no existence. Beside these cold and cheer- 
less speculations — the first of which results from 
undue emphasis upon phenomena, and not enough 
upon spirit ; and the second from a tendency 
in human nature to exalt the past, which is 
found not only in Christian nations but also 
among the heathen, and which is the same in 
realit)/ as Ancestral Worship in China — I place 
the teaching of Holy Scripture, which thrills with 
inspiration, hope and power. Peter said, " Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the living God,** and 
the emphasis is no more on the first clause than 
on the second. 

The phrase, and the idea, ** living God ** is 
common, both in the Old Testament and New. 
The Patriarchs believed in a Being near and real ; 
he communicated his will ; he talked with them 
as they walked by the way ; in the silence of the 
night, beneath the near and tender heavens, he 
uttered his commands ; in dreams his messengers 
seemed to descend and ascend on ladders of 
light ; he manifested himself in the beautiful 
order of nature, and spoke with audible voice 
unto those who had ears to hear. Moses com- 
muned with him on the Mount, and received 
from him laws for the people ; Isaiah saw his 
glory as it filled the Temple ; Elijah heard his 
voice, and was ministered to by his messengers 



THE LIVING GOD. 5 

at the brook Cherith ; Daniel was delivered by 
his power from the fiery furnace and the den of 
lions. One phrase condenses the faith of the 
Hebrews — They believed in the living God. When 
we turn from the Old Testament to the New 
the same vivid consciousness continues. The 
Master lived in the realization of the Divine 
presence and power : he talked with his Father 
and held communion with him on the still moun- 
tains, in the quiet of Galilean midnights. The 
Apostles in the same faith continued his minis- 
try. Wherever he went Paul carried the message 
— Ye are the children of the living God. He 
told the Corinthians that they were the temples 
of the living God ; he exhorted the Thessalonians 
to turn from their idols and serve the living 
God ; to Timothy he spoke of the Church of the 
living God, and to the Athenians declared that 
even idolatrous Greeks lived, moved, and had 
their being in him. The author of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews said that it was a fearful thing to fall 
into the hands of the living God ; and John, last 
and noblest of the Apostolic band, whose spiritu-^ 
ality seemed to have acquired a finer sensibility, 
spoke of the time when all w^ill come to Mount 
Zion, to the city of the living God. 

Throughout, the Bible palpitates with life. It 
is the Book of life ; its teachings are conveyed 
in terms of life. The God of the Hebrews was 
not an impersonal power, distant and difificult of 
approach, but near and constantly accessible. 



6 OLD WINE : NEW BO TTLES. 

When he manifested himself in his supreme 
revelation it was not in a book about which men 
could wrangle, but in a life which was its own 
best evidence. When the Master himself disap- 
peared, he promised that the same living ministry 
should be continued, and that the Comforter 
should come, the Spirit of Truth who should 
abide forever. In the New Testament God is 
always represented as near, efficient and un- 
changeable, ^* the same yesterday, to-day and 
forever''; not *'a marble Deity upon a marble 
throne,'' but a Father, a Friend, a Helper ; not a 
cheerless power, but a free Spirit. In him, men 
live and move and have their being. He is near 
them, even in their hearts, and yet he fills all 
spaces, for if we take the wings of the morning 
and go to the uttermost parts of the sea, he is 
there, and if we make our bed in the depths of 
the under-world, he is there. Three thoughts are 
always prominent in the Scriptures: — God is 
living; God is a Spirit ; God is everywhere. 

Philosophy and theology have been steadily 
moving toward a fuller appreciation of these 
central and governing truths. At first God was 
regarded as transcendent ; that is, a Being beyond 
the blue of the sky and the shining of the stars, 
or at least beyond the possibility of approach. 
Then men began to ask how such a Being could 
have any relations with humanity; and thus grad- 
ually, opinions have crystallized in the belief that 
God is not throned in splendor outside the walls 



THE LIVING GOD. 7 

of the universe, sending his messages down to 
humanity, as a king sends messages to his far- 
away subjects, but that he is spiritually every- 
where. Do not be troubled by that expression. 
We know not what spirit is, and yet are conscious 
that we are spirits. Each day we are humbled 
by the greatness of our own ideas. Imagination 
can traverse the universe in an instant ; one mo- 
ment we are here, and the next on the remotest 
of the fixed stars. Thought flies more swiftly 
than light; a hundred million miles in a second 
is no unusual speed. Imagination is unlimited. 
You may shut a man's body in a room, but his 
imagination and his memory will leap all barriers 
and the one will go to the ends of the earth and 
back along the track of years, while the other 
will soar through the spaces, limitless and free, 
as if there were no body. Tlie Pilgrim s Prog- 
ress was probably conceived by John Bunyan 
while he was in Bedford Jail, but bolts and bars 
of iron could not prevent him from climbing the 
Delectable Mountains and walking the streets of 
the Celestial City. 

Just what is meant by the phrases, ^^ God is a 
spirit,'' and *^ God is everywhere," we do not 
know. There is nothing contradictory in them, 
but the thought is too great for us to compre- 
hend. We do not know w^hat space is, or what 
eternity is, or even much about what the ocean 
is, although we talk of these things as if we 
knew. Modern theology is characterized by a 



8 OLD WINE : NEW BO TTLES. 

doctrine of the Divine Immanence is not new, 
but the old teaching of the Omnipresence made 
to mean something. And that so-called ** New 
Theology,'* which so many fear will overturn 
faith in religion, really is an incalculable blessing 
because it is a return to this fundamental truth. 

'' In the beginning God created.'' In the *' be- 
ginning:" — imagination is wearied in trying to 
exhaust that word. In the beginning, God : at 
the end, the City of the Living God. Thus we 
have in the Scriptures the living God at the 
beginning of all things and at the* end of all 
things. Between these two poles the Patriarchs, 
the Prophets, the Psalmist, the Apostles bore 
vital witness to the existence and the influence 
with men of the living God. There is no uncer- 
tain strain in all that music. Behind all things 
is the living God, controlling forces, inspiring 
processes, the author of life ; manifest in an 
audible voice, in a flaming bush, in a vision of 
the night, in a great historic movement, at last in 
a human form — a unique personality : and from 
first to last permeating all things, living in the 
progress of humanity, reflecting his glory in the 
splendor of the skies, revealing his watchful care 
in the clothing he fashions for the birds, and the 
provision which he makes for man. We are not 
in the hands of blind Force, or of One so far 
away that he cannot understand, and does not 
care for us : but life and history are guided by 
return to fiaith in the omnipresence of God. The 



^^ \^ '^ 



THE LIVING GOD, 9 

the same intelligence which presided at the Crea- 
tion, and the same love which bled upon the 
cross ; and we, howsoever humble, may walk 
with God and receive inspirations from him in 
the same way and to the same extent as patri- 
archs and prophets, apostles and martyrs. 

The doctrine of the Living God implies that 
all things in the past have been in his hands, and 
no man and no nation have ever been separate 
from him. His providence was not limited to 
the Hebrews : it was conspicuous in their history 
and he chose them for a special work ; but he 
has had other purposes and other lessons to teach 
mankind than those which came through Israel. 
He was as near to Babylon and Damascus as to 
Jerusalem and Bethlehem : the same hand that 
smoothed the slopes of Calvary and piled the 
snows on Lebanon made a passage through the 
mountains for the Colorado, and lifted toward 
the sun the glittering glory of Shasta. The 
living God could not be a little God. Since all 
things have been in the hands of the living God, 
love, justice and truth have been at the heart of 
things in all the past. Whether humanity started 
in a state of innocence but of imperfection, or 
whether there was in the past some golden age 
from which there has been a fall, is of little prac- 
tical importance. Whatever the theory of the 
development of man, God has never been absent, 
and his care for the children whom he has made 
has never wearied. 



lO OLD WINE : NEW BO TTLES. 

"Whatever is, is right," — a more untrue word 
was never spoken. Are vice and crime right ? 
Is the Devil a saint? Many things not '* right " 
are best for locaHties or conditions, but they must 
be gotten rid of as soon as they have served 
their purpose ; they are only means by which 
the right and truth are hastened. The old sac- 
rificial and ceremonial system was not right, and 
the prophets were hot against it, but it was best 
under the circumstances. Many abuses have ex- 
isted, from which men argue that there can be no 
justice or love ; but they forget that those abuses 
were only conditions through which, in a natural 
and living way, a higher and more perfect state 
has been realized. A bandaged arm is not right, 
but it is a condition by which a broken arm is to 
be made right. Why was the coming of the 
Master so long delayed ? Why were men, fitted 
for a religion of light and love, so long permitted 
only the light of nature ? We are pointed to the 
mysteries of Egypt and Greece, to the imperfect 
moral teachings of the sages and seers of other 
faiths, and asked. If there was a God how could 
he allow such things? The Master said to his 
Mother, '' Mine hour is not yet come ; " and his 
hour had not come a thousand years before the 
Advent, or five hundred years, or one year before 
it. But it cannot be argued that therefore God 
had no interest in humanity, and that the millions 
who peopled Asia, Africa and Europe, and who 
perhaps in earlier times roamed between the 



THE LIVING GOD, 1 1 

Atlantic and Pacific, were absent from the watch 
and care of the Almighty. If he was living he 
was living everywhere. Either there was no 
God, or there was a Being unworthy of the name, 
or else we must believe what the Scripture says, 
that ^* he has not left himself without a witness 
among any people." For myself, I rejoice to be- 
lieve that the same love which was manifested on 
Calvary has been manifested, according to the 
ability of men to receive it, in all the ages of 
the world^s history, and among all sorts and con- 
ditions of men. There have been ruder times 
and greater darkness, but those who walked in 
darkness did not thereby cease to be God's chil- 
dren : and it is probable that in many lands those 
who have tried to do right even if they stood 
alone, have been taken from lions* dens like Dan- 
iel, and like Jacob have seen angels coming to 
them out of heaven. The living God has always 
and everywhere been the loving God, and his 
hand has never once been off the wheel of 
change. 

All things are in the hands of the living God ; 
therefore the Christian doctrine of Providence is 
a necessary and beautiful reality. It is difficult 
to understand how one Being can see and know 
all who live ; how he can hear their prayers, and 
care for their necessities ; but difficulty of com- 
prehension is no indication of unreality. We 
speak the word ** God,** but no one ever yet com- 
passed its meaning. We talk about the Creator, 



1 2 OLD WINE : NE W BO TTLES, 

but who has a clear idea of what ^' Creator '* 
signifies? We talk of the universe, but who 
knows much about the universe? Day by day 
science reaches farther into tlie spaces ; some new 
star flashes its light ; and who can tell how many 
yet are undiscovered? Before infinite space we 
must bow with humiliation and awe. No man 
has fathomed it, and the seen is to the unseen as a 
single leaf to all the autumn forests ; as one grain 
of sand to all the sand of the seashore ; as one 
ray of light to the splendor which fills immensity. 
We comprehend few of the things by which we 
are surrounded, and as little appreciate the reality 
of Divine Providence, The Master said that He 
who clothed the lilies and fed the sparrows would 
much more care for the children of men : and a 
Being who has personal interest in all the birds, 
and all the flowers, and all humanity, is beyond 
the utmost stretch of imagination. Yet, in the 
midst of the storm and stress, when it seems as if 
infinite darkness were enshrouding all things, how 
sweet and glad to realize — as realize w^e may — 
that we rest in love fathomless as the spaces and 
endless as the ages ! Infinite intelligence and 
infinite love were not the exclusive property of 
some far past age, or of a narrow and conceited 
people : they belong to all peoples and all times. 
I cannot tell you how it is, but 1 am sure that no 
single child walks the streets whose name is not 
known in the heavens; not a burden presses upon 
you in business or in your homes that does not 



THE LIVING GOD, I 3 

also rest upon the heart of God ; not one Hfe is 
without purpose, and not one soul "" walks with 
aimless feet.'* Providence is a reality. 

But, also, Inspiration is a reality. Inspiration 
is the Divine Spirit speaking to the human, and 
wherever the heart is pure and the mind open, 
that Spirit comes as naturally, and inevitably, as 
light into a house when the windows are opened. 
It was a great privilege for Enoch, Moses and 
Elijah to walk with God, and to hear him speaking 
in a way which they recognized : but we are in 
the same humanity as Enoch, Moses and Elijah. 
If their hearts had been less pure, and their ears 
more dull, they would have heard no accents of 
the Divine voice ; and if our hearts are equally pure 
and equally open, the same Being who spoke to 
them will thrill us with the message which it is need- 
ful for us to hear. Some imagine that the days of 
miracles are past, and that the day of inspiration 
is ended, but that is to say that God is dead, or 
that humanity has reached His altitude. Rather 
let us believe in continuous miracle and contin- 
uous inspiration ; that men are as truly inspired 
to-day as ever they were ; that as hearts become 
purer their inspirations will be more frequent and 
constant. ** The pure in heart shall see God '* 
is not limited to one time. There is no need of 
another Bible, and none are now inspired to write 
Bibles ; but there is need of clearer light, and 
wider knowledge in many spheres, and when our 
Master went away he promised the Spirit of 



14 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

Truth, who would guide into all truth and show 
things to come. 

All the past has been in the hands of the liv- 
ing God, and the living God must be the loving 
God, for there can be no God without love. He 
did not cease to love and sacrifice when the cross 
was raised on Calvary. All things in the present 
are in the same hands, and therefore where there 
are pure spirits the Divine Spirit reveals himself 
to them as to prophets and apostles. Some think 
they cannot believe in providence and inspiration. 
Let us rather say we cannot disbelieve in them. 
They are necessary to the idea of God. 

A little child was lost the other day in the 
streets of New York, and after wandering long 
was picked up and cared for by some kindly 
people. Unable to tell where he lived, or by 
what way he had traveled, I do not know whether 
even yet he has found his home. But if that 
little child could have wandered away and have 
been, for one moment, out of the sight and care 
of God, I do not see how there could be a God. 
Along the track of the old emigrant roads, across 
the great Western plains, here and there are piles 
of stone, and above them a simple cross of wood, 
weather-beaten and decaying. When travel was 
by wagon, emigrants moved along those roads, 
and now and then a man, or woman, or child 
died, was buried by the way, and the procession 
moved on. Who lies beneath those rude cairns 
no one can tell, but if one of those persons is 



THE LIVING GOD, I 5 

unknown to God I do not see how there can be 
a God. It is not difficult to believe in providence : 
rather, it is impossible not to believe in it and 
retain our faith in God. 

The future is in the hands of the living God ; 
he is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. 
He was manifest at the Advent ; he was mani- 
fest when the Master spoke to the woman of 
Samaria and told her all her secret life : he was 
manifest when Jesus took little children in his 
arms and blessed them ; he was manifest when 
Jesus wept at the graveside in Bethany ; he w^as 
manifest when Jesus hung upon the cross and 
prayed for those who crucified him, *^ Father, for- 
give them, for they know not what they do/* 
** Yesterday, to-day and forever " ! All the past 
on the heart and in the hands of him who offered 
that prayer. All the present on the same heart 
and in the same hands. All the coming days on 
the same heart and in the same hands. We 
know not what may be the surprises of the 
future. Judged by the past, great and marvelous 
will be the ways of the King of Saints. New 
discoveries, of which now we cannot dream, w^ill 
break upon the world. The veil between the 
physical and the spiritual will grow thinner, until 
perhaps through it men will almost be able to 
see. The unexplored spaces will speak their 
secrets into the ears of those who listen. Con- 
ditions which now are vicious, and circumstances 
which work ruin, will be transformed, and a new 



1 6 OLD WINE : NE W BOTTLES. 

and more healthful stock breed a race with purer 
affections and loftier aspirations. The future is 
with God, and the Judge of all the earth will do 
right. Whatever is symbolized by the majestic 
descriptions of the Judgment will come to its 
realization; but the judgment-seat itself will be 
occupied by Him who hung upon the cross, and 
no harm and no injustice, and nothing at enmity 
with love will come to one human being. 

This is the faith of the Christian. The heart 
of our creed is not what we believe about the 
Hebrews or the heathen, but what we believe 
about God ; and we believe that he was revealed 
in Jesus Christ to take away the sin of the 
world ; that in all the past his plans of blessing 
have been maturing; that in the present those 
same plans are moving toward their consumma- 
tion, and that sometime he will see of the travail 
of his soul and be satisfied. Things are moving 
upward ; the process never ceases, and God is 
never absent. He is in the struggle, submitting 
to limitation, manifesting himself both in defeat 
and in victory, and by defeat and victory, sorrow 
and joy, hastening the day in which there will be 
no more darkness and no more pain. Nothing is 
by chance ; nothing is left to fate ; all things are 
in the hands of love. Your child, your husband, 
your wife, your friend, is in the grasp of a terrible 
disease and your heart breaks ; but God is not 
dead, and he loves with a love transcending 
yours, as the heavens are above the earth. Your 



THE LIVING GOD. 1 7 

child is getting into evil ways, and your heart 
agonizes for him ; but God is not blind, and his 
love transcends your love, and his patience your 
patience, as the heavens are higher than the 
earth. 

Here comes a question which possibly some 
will be foolish enough to ask: '^If all is moving 
toward good, and all will work for good, what 
difference does it make what we do ? Are we 
not doing his will whether we are righteous, or 
whether we are wicked ? If we do wrong is it 
our fault?" Now and then such questions are 
raised: what shall be answered? His purposes 
for good will go on with us if we will, but with- 
out us if we resist. The mystery of freedom is 
great and awful. It cannot be explained, but this 
we know : the providence of God always works 
toward harmony with wisdom, truth and love. 
If any one follows evil he puts himself out of 
harmony with the nature of things and the will 
of God. Whether he can stay outside that will 
forever, or whether by discipline and punishment 
he will be compelled to come to himself, we 
need not inquire. The outlook in either case is 
terrible enough. It is never God's purpose that 
any man should sin ; it is his will that all should 
be saved. But, whether men will go with it or 
not, his purpose of blessing will move on. A 
steamer will leave the port of New York to- 
morrow. You can go with it, or you can remain, 
but the steamer will not be anchored to your 



1 8 OLD WINE : NEW BOTTLES. 

whims. And the plan of God, by which he is 
causing all things to work together for good, will 
be accomplished, and all may go with it, have 
part in it, and help to make its movement the 
swifter; they may have fellowship with the great 
and good of the ages ; they may march in the 
same ranks with prophets and apostles, with 
seers and sages, with missionaries and martyrs — 
with those who have died rather than deny the 
truth ; they may hasten the victory, and when it 
is complete, rejoice in the consciousness that 
they have helped a little toward hastening the 
glad new day. But a baby*s hand might as well 
attempt to prevent the sun from rising as for any 
to imagine that they can do aught to prevent the 
realization of His purposes whose love is everlast- 
ing and whose power is resistless. 

This, then, is the conclusion we have reached. 
We cannot grasp it, we cannot comprehend it, 
we cannot see it with the mortal eye, but we, and 
all who live, are in the hands of measureless, 
fathomless, omnipotent and unending Love. All 
the past is his, and all the future is his, also. We 
live and move and have our being in the Living 
God; and he says: ** Whosoever will, let him 
come, and take of the water of life freely.** 



II. 

THE HOLY TRINITY. 



" There is only one God. The testimony of Scripture here ab- 
solutely accords with the witness of our conscience, and with the 
obvious unity of the universe in all its provinces and succes- 
sions." — A. A. Hodge. 

" God exceeds our measure, and must, until either He becomes 
less than infinite or we more than finite. If we can apprehend 
Him so as to be clear of distraction, and of terms that are abso- 
lutely cross to faith itself, it is all that can be hoped." — Horace 

BUSHNELL. 

" For the loving worm within its clod 
Were diviner than a loveless God 
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say." 

Robert Browning. 

" So to our mortal eyes subdued, 
Flesh veiled but not concealed. 
We know in Thee the Fatherhood 
And heart of God revealed." 

John G. Whittier. 

" Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." — 
Matthew xxviii. 19. 



11. 

The Holy Trinity. 

The doctrine which fifty years ago was most 
in the thought of American Christians, and 
which once divided the Church, is now seldom 
mentioned. It could hardly be otherwise. The 
subjects which interest to-day are practical rather 
than speculative; thought reaches down to funda- 
mental questions, and is occupied with inquiries 
concerning the existence of God and the spiritual 
and immortal nature of man. Yet it is not to 
be supposed, because men talk less about the 
Trinity, that it has been relegated to the museum 
of theological antiquities. Its essential elements 
were never so firmly held or so widely ac- 
cepted ; but this and all other religious truths are 
approached in a better spirit than formerly. 
Those who without a respectable knowledge of 
their own language, and much less of the lan- 
guages in which the Bible was written, presume 
to talk authoritatively about things in infinity 
and eternity, have fortunately almost disap- 



22 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

peared. Doctrines which never can be fully 
comprehended are not proper subjects for dog- 
matic statement, and least of all for controversy. 
Moreover, clear ideas about such subjects are 
now seldom required for church membership. 
Men are beginning to realize that as a violet may 
grow and absorb colors from the light without 
understanding its chemistry, so a spirit may grow 
in likeness to God without comprehending his 
nature. 

The doctrine of the Trinity, then, is relatively 
out of sight, for two reasons: first, the progress 
of science has forced an entirely different class of 
subjects into prominence ; and second. Christian 
men appreciate that, however profound and 
practical the subject may be for meditation, it 
can never, without irreverence, be made a subject 
of debate. The clouds of the old battle have 
blown away, and now it is seen that the combat- 
ants were fighting to the death for what in the 
nature of things could never be settled. Each 
contended for a half-truth. The Unitarians were 
strenuous for the unity of God, and the Trinita- 
rians for his trinity. Each side was true in what 
it affirmed, and largely in error in w^hat it denied. 

Laying aside further reference to the past, let 
us examine the doctrine of the Trinity from a 
Biblical and experimental standpoint. I have no 
interest in the subject as mere speculation. 
As a theological conundrum it is entitled to no 
more consideration than a child's riddle. If it 



THE HOLY TRINITY. 23 

has no mission in the v/orld except to be written 
in creeds for the purpose of keeping Unitarians 
out of so-called '^ Orthodox " churches the 
quicker it disappears the better for spiritual relig- 
ion. Precisely because this doctrine as taught 
by our Lord seems to me a condensation of the 
Gospel, and an answer to the intuitions of the 
reason and moral sense, I venture to speak to 
you about it to-day. 

Is the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible? 
The first feeling on turning to the Bible for the 
purpose of finding this doctrine is one of amaze- 
ment. It is nowhere directly stated. Let no 
one be surprised, for the Scriptures do not teach 
the existence of God. They declare ^' The fool 
hath said there is no God,'* but they do not 
teach His existence ; they presume it from begin- 
ning to end, and without it would be meaning- 
less. In the same way they presume the Trinity, 
and without it would be meaningless. Our Lord 
when his work on the earth was finished, when 
he must have been overwhelmed with the con- 
sciousness that he would speak in the flesh no 
more ; when he knew that his words would have 
the authority of a final utterance ; when he was 
giving his last directions concerning the advance- 
ment of his Kingdom, made the most exact and 
emphatic statement of the doctrine that it has 
ever had. His disciples were soon to start with 
their message around the world, and he was 
about to leave them forever, when he said : 



24 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

"• Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptiz- 
ing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost/' This practically 
says: *' Go, make converts, and seal them to the 
new life equally in the name of the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Spirit/' Now whether any 
human expression of that doctrine is true or not, 
evidently by his use of these names our Lord 
understood them in some real sense to refer to 
the One God. 

Exactly analogous is the benediction in 2 Cor. 
xiii: 14 — "- The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and 
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy 
Spirit, be with you all." Here St. Paul associ- 
ates the three names in the same formula, and 
apparently teaches that what is back of one name 
is as real, as distinct, as enduring and as much to 
be reverenced, as what is symbolized by either of 
the others. 

Some imagine that they detect a hint of this 
truth, although only a hint, in the fact that in 
the Old Testament one name of the Deity is 
a plural form. ^^And God (Elohim) said, Let 
us make man in our image." But this is a fan- 
ciful interpretation. What was formerly consid- 
eded conclusive evidence concerning this subject 
was I John v: 7 — ''There are three that bear 
record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the 
Holy Ghost : and these three are one." But that 
is spurious. It was probably interpolated into the 
sacred text by some scribe more anxious to sup- 



THE HOLY TRINITY, 2$ 

port a theory than to transmit truth. The words 
are omitted in the Revised New Testament. 

As these three names are joined in the final 
commission of Christ to iiis disciples, so all through 
the New Testament with each name is associ- 
ated tlie same powers and attributes. In tlie 
first chapter of John's Gospel we read: ** In the 
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God." The '* Logos 
— the Word — an expression used by the Greek 
philosophers to represent the utterance or mani- 
festation of the Divine Reason, — is used by the 
Apostle John to represent God as manifested in 
a distinct personality, intelligible to man." The 
Word of God, in John's Gospel means the Son 
of God. God is thus said to have created the 
world by the Son. The Son is declared to re- 
veal the Father. The Son himself said : '' He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
The judgment is to be in the Son' shands. In 
the same way, the same epithets and attributes 
are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The most 
superficial reader of the New Testament must 
have noticed that at times Christ is spoken 
of as if he had the power and authority of 
God ; and that similar language is applied 
to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the three 
names are used interchangeably. These names 
are associated in the most sacred relations. 
In the last utterance of our Lord, already given, 
they are classed together in such a way as implies 



26 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

equality : — Go preach and baptize in the three- 
fold name. If that were the only reference in 
the Scripture to this subject I should hail it with 
the utmost delight, for to me instead of being a 
simple mystery, of no use except to cause good 
people to stumble, it is a light w^hich makes clear 
and reasonable the otherwise incomprehensible 
mystery of God. The problem, then, is simply 
this: Are these three names for One Being, or 
do they denote three distinct persons ? 

Having thus before us in outline the Scrip- 
ture teaching on this subject, observe a few fun- 
damental facts, as applicable to it. 

There is only one God. The Trinitarian be- 
lieves in one God, and only one, as truly as the 
Unitarian. It is not a question between one and 
three : but between one who is a simple person, 
and one who is more complex, as a man is more 
complex than a plant. The Unitarian says, God 
is a person like ourselves, only infinite of course : 
the Trinitarian says, He is one as we are only not 
a simple but a complex personality. Life ever 
moves toward complexity, and the highest is most 
complex. Keep this clear, — Unitarian and Trin- 
itarian alike and equally believe in one God, and 
only one. 

These names in the New Testament are all 
applied to God, therefore they either represent 
three distinct beings, or they are three distinct 
names for one Being. But names of inferior 
beings would not be applied to the Supreme : 



THE HOLY TRINITY, 2/ 

the presumption is, therefore, that the names are 
different appellations for one Deity. Jesus him- 
self, quoting ** the first and great command- 
ment,'' declared, ''The Lord our God is one." 
The chief difficulty on this subject has arisen 
from the unfortunate phrase, which is not Bibli- 
cal, '' Three persons in one God." But the word 
'* person " is an expedient of philosophy. Phi- 
losophy tried to explain the inexplicable, and 
took that word " person " for a crutch, and then 
limped all the way through its explanation. This 
word is misleading, whether used by a Unitarian 
or Trinitarian. The Trinitarian says, '' three 
persons in one person ; " and the Unitarian re- 
plies, '' That is absurd ! how can one be three at 
the same time it is only one? You believe that 
God the Father is one person, and the Son is 
another person, and the Holy Spirit is another 
person : that each has a separate w^ork, and yet 
that there is but one Person, — the idea is incon- 
ceivable ! " Yes, and that word '' person " has not 
the slightest Scriptural foundation ; but it is used 
by theologians with careful qualifications. My 
studies in theology were under the most emi- 
nent theologian who has ever lived in America, 
and he was always careful to say that by '* person" 
we really mean distinction — three distinctions in 
one person, rather than three persons in one 
person. Professor Park's words'^ are, '* There is a 

* From reports of his Lectures as delivered to his students, 
1869. 



28 OLD WINE: AEIV BOTTLES. 

threefold distinction in the Godhead .... and 
these three are one God.'* Again he says : *' The 
word ' person ' when applied to the distinctions of 
the Trinity has always been understood as 
used in a peculiar sense.*' These distinctions 
are not merely official, but eternal. 

Moreover, the word ** person " as used by the 
Unitarian in regard to God involves as great a 
mystery and as great contradiction as the word 
*^ Trinity *' when used by ourselves. All say that 
God is a person ; yet God can be only figuratively 
said to be a person. 

'^ A person or agent, as we conceive the 
term, . . . wills, putting forth successively new 
determinations of will, without which new deter- 
minations personality is null, and no agency at 
all. But God never does that. He does not de- 
cide to do one thing to-day, and change His mind 
and do another thing to-morrow. He has the 
same purpose from eternity. So a person thinks, 
and has a succession of thoughts, but that can- 
not be said of God, for He who knows all things 
cannot think in the same forms that we do. 
We remember; to Him all things are present — 
nothing has to be recalled. A person has 
momentary feelings ; God is the ' same yester- 
day, to-day and forever.' Literally, God is not a 
person, for the very word is finite in all its meas- 
ures and implications, because it is derived from 
ourselves. Figuratively He is a person, and 
beyond this, nothing can be said which is more 



THE HOLY TRINITY. 29 

definite, save that He is in some sense uncon- 
ceived, a real agent who holds Himself related 
personally to us, meeting us on terms of mutual- 
ity, such that we can have the sense of society 
with Him, and the confidence of His society 
with us, as if He were in truth a h'teral person 
like ourselves/' '^ 

It is said, *' I believe in God who is simply one 
person ; '' but that statement means '* I believe 
in God who is infinite and finite at the same time, 
who is so great that he cannot be known and yet 
who is intimately known ; " and that is a contra- 
diction as hard to get over as to say, ** I believe 
in God who is one and yet three/' Our Unita- 
rian friends are in the same predicament as our- 
selves. The difficulty for both of us comes from 
trying to make simple that which in the nature of 
things is complex and inexplicable. Now and 
then some one asks for more definiteness in theo- 
logical thought, and declares that the religious 
outlook is discouraging because men insist on 
saying *^ We don't know" before eternal myste- 
ries. The time never was in which men had any 
right to be more positive than now : and they 
never were more positive about the things con- 
cerning which knowledge is possible. 

Certain doctrines are indefinite as to details, 
while as facts they gain emphasis from their 
indefiniteness. They are too great for expres- 

*Bushnell : Building Eras^ \) 1 14-1 15. 



30 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

sion. Finite words cannot utter infinite realities. 
In the Scriptures God is not defined ; the doc- 
trine of the Atonement is not laid out as a town- 
ship on a map ; the doctrine of Retribution is 
left in a cloud — but a cloud full of thunderings, 
and lightnings, and warnings ; and the doctrine 
of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is never care- 
fully defined, and yet it is clothed with an im- 
pressiveness and majesty that exact definition 
never possesses. 

Having thus stated the Biblical foundation 
for what men have called the Doctrine of the 
Trinity, and having shown that it does not 
mean three distinct persons, but three distinc- 
tions in one person ; that the idea of personality 
when applied to Deity involves as great difficul- 
ties as the idea of trinity ; and that any revela- 
tion of what is infinite must, because of poverty 
of language, be cloudy and indefinite, we now 
turn to the testimony to this doctrine from reason 
and experience. Some subjects are understood, 
if at all, only by experience. I have learned by 
my own experience what neither the Bible, other 
books, nor any theological teacher ever taught 
me: that in order to belief in the unity of God 
the doctrine of the Trinity as stated by our Lord 
is essential. Many who think they reject the 
Trinity actually recognize it: many are spirit- 
ually Trinitarians and intellectually Unitarians. 
Charles Kingsley was one of the most honest 
men who ever lived. In a letter to a friend, 



THE HOLY TRINITY, 3 1 

Thomas Cooper, he said:* *' But my heart 
demands the Trinity as much as my reason. I 
want to be sure that God cares for me. ... I 
want to love and honor the absolute, abysmal 
God Himself, and none other will satisfy me. . . . 
and I say boldly, if the doctrine be not in the 
Bible it ought to be, for the whole spiritual 
nature of man cries out for it." I echo his words 
— '* If it be not in the Bible it ought to be." 
The process by which I have reached this conclu- 
sion is as follows : 

Man is surrounded by Nature, with her seas 
and storms, her firmament thick-set with stars, 
her earthquakes and eclipses ; day is followed by 
night, and darkness is ever the hiding-place of 
power. Man is a cause : he can exert energy ; 
and when he sees storms careering through the 
heavens and lashing the oceans into moun- 
tains, he believes the hidden energy to be in the 
hands of an unseen Person. That Person man 
will strive to know and to propitiate. As the 
field of his observation widens there will be 
larger and more awful conception of the majesty 
of the unseen Being. Science whispers her 
secrets — says that the stars are worlds, and that 
there are galaxies of systems sailing in space ; 
shows that light traverses distances impossible of 
measurement ; hints at the forces which bind the 
worlds together, — and thus this thought of the 

* Biography of Kingsley p. 198. 



32 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

unseen Person grows until it overwhelms and 
prostrates. With our knowledge of the universe, 
— with thought running back to the time when 
the constellations were luminous and burning 
mist diffused through space ; with immensity mul- 
tiplied by eternity — the idea of God is simply 
incomprehensible. Expedients of expression are 
resorted to by baffled intellects. Some say, 
Everything is God — that is Pantheism ; or, There 
is nothing but eternally changing matter — that is 
Materialism : but still hearts love and aspire, and 
still something within keeps frantically and con- 
fidently reaching for some One outside to answer 
inappeasable longings. With each year of prog- 
ress the difficulty increases. Science is explor- 
ing the universe. The telescope opens vistas of 
distance before which we are breathless ; appar- 
ently dead metals are made to palpitate with 
music ; the spectroscope has analyzed the light 
pf stars and told what substances are burning in 
their far-away fires; it even is said that there are 
stars so remote that their light traveling since 
the Creation has not reached here yet, and will 
not arrive ijntil we have joined the countless 
dead, God, the Creator, the King, the Father, 
he who holds all things in his hands — who by 
searching can find him out? Can you imagine a 
Being, who never began, and who will never 
cease to be? What do you mean by infinity? 
'* Infinity '' and '' eternity '* are words used to 
veil Ignorance. No man ever fully compre- 



THE HOLY TRINITY, 33 

hended them. I speak tlie word ^^ God." 
That represents to me the First Cause of the 
universe ; but I do not even know what a 
'* cause " is, and I do not know what the '' uni- 
verse " is. We cannot wonder that angels veil 
their faces, crying before him, ** Holy, Holy, Holy 
Lord God Almighty." The awful, unknown and 
illimitable must always be theyzr^-/ idea of God. 
Thus far there is no difference of opinion. Infi- 
nite power, infinite wisdom, infinite holiness — 
that is God : and now having reached this con- 
clusion, do we know any more about him than 
before? Thus far our Unitarian friends go with 
us: and here we part company. 

But if we have only this knowledge we might 
as well know nothing of God. He is beyond us. 
Prayer is impossible, and religion a dream. We 
need to know not only that God is, but that he can 
be approached. If that knowledge is ever pos- 
sessed it will be by his adapting himself to us. 
The search for God is as old as human thought. 
Much of what is miscalled "infidelity" is only 
an eager cry for surer knowledge. What is God 
like? Has he any thought or care for men? 
Sorrow crushes; no man can help; slowly and 
remorselessly fate closes around us, and the end 
is not far off : — are we only grist in an infinite 
mill whose stones grind on forever ? Something 
within tells us that the Power outside cares for us, 
and that we can cry to Him and He will hear us, 
— that is, we personify that Power. This is not 



34 OLD WINK: NEW BOTTLES, 

my experience alone: it has been universal in 
all ages. Men have not only believed in God, 
but they have believed in a God who has revealed 
himself. Something of this idea is in almost all 
religions, — indeed, must be, for if we have simply 
an unrevealed and infinite God religion is impos- 
sible : there may be prostration, but there can 
be no communion. I believe in God ; but if I 
must stop there then I might as well believe in 
nothing: it were better to be blind than to see 
only a force and no love. Hearts cry not only for 
God, but for One who adapts himself to human 
weakness. If God speaks to a man it must be in 
language which he can understand: if he shows 
himself it must be in a form to be recognized : if 
he speaks to me it must be in the English lan- 
guage. There is in all men a demand which can 
be satisfied only by a God revealed. 

What is the doctrine of the New Testament on 
this point ? God answers this longing of the 
soul of man in the only way it can be answered, 
by revelation in humanity. The Logos-doctrine 
is that it is eternally the nature of God to mani- 
fest himself. Whenever in the New Testament 
you have a reference to God considered alone, 
the name used is Father. Whenever that Father 
is represented as coming into relations with men 
the name is Son, or Logos (Word), that is, the 
Father communicating or revealing himself — as 
the uttered word reveals the thought. And so 
we believe that there is forever in God that which 



TIIEMOLY TRINITY. 35 

is manifest in what Jesus Clirist was and did. 
I want to know about God: his power I see in 
Nature ; his feehngs toward men, in Jesus Christ. 
Does God care for the poor? Nature seems 
sometimes to say, ** Only to crush them ; " Jesus 
preached the glad tidings to them and fed them. 
Does God care for the sick? Jesus went about 
heaUng diseases. Does God have sympathy for 
those who have broken his laws? Jesus prayed 
for those who crucified him. Does God care 
for the sorrowful ? At the grave of Lazarus Jesus 
wept. Does God regard the masses who struggle 
in sorrow and pain? Jesus said, *' Come unto 
me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and 
I will give you rest.*' Does God really love 
men ? The life of Christ, the teachings of Christ, 
the death of Christ, all answer, — '' He seeks to 
save that which was lost.'' Take this one phrase, 
"God manifest in the flesh," and you have the 
clearest teaching concerning the earthly life of 
our Master. 

But that revelation was necessarily limited ; 
limited to a human form, by human language, to 
a short period of time. What relation to God 
had the millions who lived before Jesus Christ ? 
What relation have we to him ? These are ques- 
tions of fundamental importance. What says 
Christ? '' He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father." The Father does not change : God is, 
always has been, always will be, in all his rela- 
tions to men, just what Christ was, who died to 



36 0*LD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

save men ; and so the cross declares that it has 
always been God's nature to seek and save the 
lost, and that it always will be. 

If we continue to use the unfortunate word 
'' person/' we may say that we have now before our 
thought the first and second persons of the Trinity. 

There is yet one more question. We need to 
know not only that God is, and that it is his 
eternal nature to reveal himself, but whether 
there is in this Nineteenth Century of the Chris- 
tian era, any possibility of getting near to him : 
in other words. Has he anything to do with us 
now, or, when Christ died and the Bible was 
written, did God retire into infinite and thence- 
forward unbroken solitude? It is well to know 
that Christ died eighteen hundred years ago to 
save sinners, but men need a Saviour now as much 
as they needed him then. It is well to point to 
the Bible as an infallible guide, but new ques- 
tions are arising each day which every child knows 
the New Testament does not pretend to answer. 
The Bible says, ^' Love thy neighbor,*' but does 
not tell what love will lead a man to do. We 
need not only to know that God exists, and that 
he revealed himself eighteen hundred years ago, 
but whether he cares for us now, and whether 
there is any new light to break on the darkness of 
earth. A German theologian has said : '* All 
men have desired a human God, that is, a manifest 
God ; " and I add. All men desire a present God. 

What says the Bible to this ? '' In the begin- 



THE HOLY TRINITY, l^J 

ning the spirit of God moved upon the face of 
the waters;" — that is, when chaos reigned, and 
man was not, God was then moving on nature. 
**And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come; — " 
that is, when the New Jerusalem shall descend 
out of heaven from God the last sound that will 
echo over the old creation will be God cry- 
ing to men, '' Come." God, a Spirit, in personal 
contact and communication with human spirits, 
interpreting old truth, revealing new truth, in the 
intimate daily leadership of spirits — that is the 
teaching of the Bible : for that, w^eary, strug- 
gling, defeated, but never entirely cast down, all 
men continually do cry. And so we have the 
doctrine of the Spirit — God always in vital touch 
with the spirit of man, convicting of sin, inspir- 
ing aspiration, revealing new truth. 

God pervading the universe, and so transcend- 
ing thought ; God not forever unknowable, but 
in all things which concern men just what Jesus 
Christ was; God near to each one of us, even in 
our hearts, and so immanent in every soul. The 
three-fold name corresponds to a three-fold de- 
mand in the human nature. We have thus before 
us the doctrine as taught by our Lord : 

(i) The great, abysmal, infinite One — whom 
he named Father. 

(2) The same One in self-revelation, from 
eternity to eternity manifested through a distinct 
human personality — called the Son. 



38 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

(3) The same One always moving on human 
spirits and drawing them toward himself — called 
the Spirit. 

' And, now, 1 am ready to tell why I believe in 
the doctrine of the Trinity : why I can say with 
the poet preacher of England : '' If it is not in 
the Bible it ought to be." It is because the uni- 
verse is to me without any meaning if this doc- 
trine be not true. Jesus Christ revealed facts ; 
and only facts are essential to faith. Each of us 
is not only justified but required as best he can 
to harmonize facts. Others have no more right 
to tell us how we must interpret facts than we 
have to tell them. The simplest statement of 
any doctrine is usually the best. The words of 
Christ in his last commission are clear; he told 
his disciples to baptize in the three-fold name, 
because that condensed the Gospel. I believe in 
that doctrine, because the Bible teaches it, and 
because the human soul demands it. 

I believe in God, the Father Almighty. 

I believe that it is an eternal distinction of the 
nature of God to manifest himself, and that in 
Jesus the Christ he has so manifested himself to 
man. 

I believe that God did not wait until Christ 
came, to have intercourse with men, but that he 
had been moving on human hearts in all ages 
and lands, in China and India and on the Islands, 
as well as in Judaea, and that since Christ has 



THE IIOL Y TKINITY. 



39 



gone He has been continuing and will continue 
forever this work of salvation. 

Thus the world's longing for God, for a human 
God, for a present and never-leaving God, is met 
and answered in the three-fold name. Is this 
simply a confusion of words? Is this simply a 
theological conundrum? None who have seri- 
ously considered the problems of human thought 
and life can think that it is. This doctrine of 
God is the only answer that I know to our pro- 
found and otherwise unsatisfied longings. I am 
afraid that many wander in darkness because, 
while they vaguely believe in God, they have not 
yet seen him as revealed, and as ever-present. " It 
is one of the merits of this doctrine,'' says Bush- 
nell, ** that it does not fool us in the confidence 
that we can perfectly know and comprehend God 
by our first thought." To me — as our Lord 
stated it, not as men have philosophized about it 
when trying to stretch it on the iron frame of 
their theological systems — the doctrine condenses 
the whole Gospel ; it is the door through which 
the new day streams upon the darkness of hu- 
manity; it is the truth to live by, the truth to die 
by, the truth that makes immortality a necessity. 

And now what can we do, who rejoice in this 
superlative reality, except key our hearts and our 
lives to the sublimest of doxologies, which has 
been chanted with fervor and harmony continu- 
ously growing through all the Christian centu- 
ries, and which will be chanted until the earthly 



4p OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

music shall break into the " Holy, Holy, Holy," 
of the Heavenly temple — ''Glory be to the 
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; 
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall 
be, world without end. Amcnr 



III. 

WHAT IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE? 



" I find more and more that the Bible is made very little use of 
for its true purpose, but all the more for purposes which are quite 
foreign to it." — Rothe. 

" God be praised that this our book has not the clearness of a 
symbol or creed : that we are not forced to comprehend it aright, 
and that we may give many meanings to his word .... It is not 
in a chain of dry sentences that God reveals to us his will and 
the principles of his government; it is essentially by facts."— 
Alexander Vinet. 

" Out from the heart of nature rolled 
The burdens of the Bible old : 
The litanies of nations came, 
Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 
Up from the burning core below, — 
The canticles of love and woe." 

Emerson, The Problem. 

" Before all things the Bible is the book which has reached the 
highest conception of God yet attained by the human conscious- 
ness." — Henry Ward Beecher. 

" The redemptive purpose of God was not ushered into the 
world a full-grown fact ; it evolved itself by a regular process of 
growth, and the process was marked by three salient features : 
slow movement, partial action, and advance to the perfect from 
the more or less imperfect, not only in knowledge but also in 
morality." — Professor Alexander B. Bruce. 

" Word of Mercy, giving 
Succor to the living ; 
Word of life, supplying 
Comfort to the dying." 

H. W. Baker. 

"The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are 
life."— John vi. 6y 



III. 

What is Left of the Bible ? 

The air is full of discussions concerning the 
Bible. Those who would discredit it have at 
least one great problem before them, and that is, 
How a common book, written by ordinary men, 
can have commanded, for so long a time and un- 
der such varying circumstances, the attention and 
study of such different classes of people. Quite 
as many eminent and able scholars are devoted 
to its elucidation as to the sciences of geology or 
astronomy. Those who do not recognize in it 
any binding authority, still, by some subtle at- 
traction, spend years over its pages. Some study 
it that they may overthrow it ; others that they 
may discover its place in the world's literature; 
others that they may use it in support of systems 
of theology ; others for the splendor of its lit- 
erary style ; and vastly more because of the light 
which it sheds on this life and the hints it gives 
concerning the life to come. Even great scien- 
tists, like Huxley and Tyndal, turn from their 



44 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

laborious investigations and seek recreation in 
what may be called ** theological and critical by- 
play." 

And this is no new thing. The Bible for a 
thousand years has been more in the thought and 
attention of the civilized world than all other 
books combined. That it has drawn the atten- 
tion of such acute and finished destructive crit- 
icism is a majestic tribute to its greatness. This 
study of The Book seems to have culminated in 
our time. Scholarship revolves around it : and 
the profoundest thinkers of the Old World and 
the New are attempting to solve the problems 
which it suggests. Many earnest and timid souls 
who do not yet realize that the foundation of our 
faith is not in the dead letter but in the Living 
Spirit, not in the miracles of two thousand years 
ago but in the continuous miracle of all the two 
thousand years, feel as if the whole structure of 
Christianity were falling. 

We have heard much during the past year or 
two concerning critical questions — Who wrote 
the books of the Bible ? and, When were they 
written? I desire to direct your attention to cer- 
tain facts which cannot be changed by any theo- 
ries concerning the authorship of the books, or 
the structure of either of the Testaments. 

In the first place, observe that not one of the 
books whose authorship is called in question as- 
serts that it was written by the person whose 
name it bears. Tradition says that the first five 



WHA T IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE ? 45 

books of the Old Testament were written by- 
Moses. If new light shall prove that they were 
written by some one else, the world loses noth- 
ing. That they have been believed to be of 
Mosaic authorship no more afTects their teach- 
ings than the quality of the metal in its case af- 
fects the accuracy of a watch. The time was 
when tlie Ptolemaic Astronomy was believed to 
be infallible ; and when a more reasonable sug- 
gestion was ventured millions of pious souls were 
sorely troubled. But the change came, and in- 
stead of the evil effect which had been predicted 
the universe expanded, and the idea of God be- 
came more glorious and inspiring. I make no 
defence and no condemnation of Higher Criti- 
cism. A great change in the interpretation of im- 
portant passages of the Bible may be forced. If 
it ought to be, the quicker it comes the better; if 
it ought not to be, clearer light will end in more 
firmly establishing the old positions. Never were 
so many consecrated Christian scholars studying 
Holy Scripture. If we cannot trust that they 
and those like them will by and by reach truth, 
we can believe nothing. Those not experts in 
the languages in which the Bible was written 
should remember that their opinions on these 
questions are not worth the words taken to utter 
them. It is ludicrous to suppose that good men 
are necessarily wise critics, or that questions 
which only careful scholarship can answer can be 
settled by a show of hands. Great scholars are 



46 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

studying the Scriptural problems, and great 
scholars are on both sides. Whether Moses or 
some one else wrote the first five books of the 
Old Testament ; whether there were one or two 
Isaiahs ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or some un- 
known writer is the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, is of little importance so long as the 
truth which the books contain, and which is. cer- 
tified by its correspondence with the needs of 
humanity, remains untouched. 

'* We believe that a church is a society of men 
possessing the life of the Eternal Son of God, 
and having direct access through him in the 
power of the Spirit to the Father ; of men know- 
ing for themselves, at first hand, the reaUty and 
glory of the Christian redemption ; of men to 
whom the truth of the Christian Gospel is au- 
thenticated by a most certain experience, the ex- 
perience not of the individual life merely, but of 
a society. Is this consistent with the agitation, 
the heat, the panic, created by the assaults of 
critics on the historic records of the Jewish and 
the Christian revelations ? We of all men should 
keep calm. These controversies leave untouched 
the strong guarantees of our faith. For every 
church is a society of independent witnesses to 
the grace and power of Christ. For us the im- 
mediate manifestations of the eternal life that 
dwells in Christ are found not merely in the 
words and deeds and sufferings recorded in the 
Four Gospels, but in the company of the faith- 



WHA T IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE ? 4/ 

ful. We know that Christ is aUve from the dead, 
for He lives in them.""^ 

Let us now attempt to answer the question, 
What would be left of the Bible even if all the 
claims of the critics were valid ? Is there any 
vital truth in the Holy Scriptures which is inde- 
pendent of theories concerning the authorship of 
its books, or their arrangement in the canon ? 

The Bible is the Book of God, At its begin- 
ning we meet that word, and never does it disap- 
pear. The creation is ascribed to God — ^' The 
spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters; '* when man appears he is in the image 
of God ; when he has fallen it is not out of the 
care and watch of the Almighty, for from begin- 
ning to end echoes the Psalmist's exclamation — 
**If I ascend up into heaven thou art there: if 
I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in 
the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall 
thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold 
me.'* The world is represented as resting in 
God's providence. Enoch walked with God ; 
Abraham was the friend of God. God planned 
for the education of the race in spiritual things. 
To realize that purpose one nation was chosen. 
That nation was selected not to be the only one 
saved out of the world, but for the purpose of 



* R. W. Dale, Address at The Inte^'national Congregatio7ial 
Council y London^ 1891. 



48 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

saving the world. The Jewish people were 
separated from others that they might be a light 
in the darkness. The light is no more favored 
than those who walk in its rays. That the 
millions in heathenism, as well as the few He- 
brews, were not outside the providence of God is 
evident because he prepared a peculiar people to 
make visible his nature and presence in the 
world. The story from Genesis to Revelation 
thrills with one thought ; — men and nations, in 
all conditions and times, rest on the heart and in 
the hands of infinite and never-failing Father- 
hood. At the beginning God creates : at the end 
the Spirit invites. At the beginning are the 
clouds and storms of a weltering chaos, but above 
them God ; at the end the glory and splendor of 
the New Jerusalem descending out -of heaven 
from God ; and in what may be called the center 
of the space between is uplifted the cross on 
which the blood was shed, revealing that even 
God enters into suffering and sacrifice in order 
that his purposes of blessing may be accom- 
plished. To take God out of the Bible would be 
like taking the sun out of the firmament. Before 
the storms and earthquakes, before the bright- 
ness of the sun and the beauty of the stars, the 
heathen have bowed ; but the Bible, retaining 
all the glory and majesty of the idea of God 
which comes from the creation, adds to it the 
assurance that from the beginning until now 
humanity has been held in the leashes of an 



IVHA T IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE ? 49 

infinitely loving heart. With that thought our 
Bible begins, and with that it ends. No one can 
escape from the love of God. It is all-embracing, 
like the atmosphere ; all-pervading, like the light, 
without beginning of years or end of days — 
for the cultivated and ignorant alike. More 
than that, even the creation itself *'groaneth and 
travaileth in pain, waiting for the adoption of 
the sons of God.'* The greatness of this truth 
passes comprehension. It is high ; who can 
attain unto it? All men, all nations, and even 
the physical universe, are encompassed by in- 
finite and never-ending Love, — that is the note 
to which is keyed all the music of our Bible. 

The Bible is the Book of Forgiveness, Love 
would be mockery without forgiveness. He who 
carries in his heart a guilty secret imagines that 
the universe is armed for his destruction : even 
the physical forces seem to be his enemies ; he 
hates the light. ^' Evil loves darkness." There 
is a profound philosophy in that phrase. How it 
came to be true we need not inquire. Whether 
there is a personal spirit of evil, or whether sin 
is natural weakness, are questions of little im- 
portance. In all ages, and among all peoples, 
the consciousness of guilt has been terribly real. 
The system of sacrifices had its rise — no one 
knows when — in the consciousness of man that 
he had wronged the Supreme Power. Whether 
that power is God, or the Devil, the longing for 
forgiveness is manifested everywhere. You might 



50 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

as well try to take out of the world the Alps or 
the Andes as this consciousness of guilt. This 
fact the Bible recognizes, and, almost alone 
among books, addresses itself to answer the 
inappeasable and universal hunger for pardon. 
The Hebrews at first were allowed to offer sacri- 
fices, probably because they were essential to the 
popular idea of religion ; but, gradually, as virtue 
was attached to them rather than to God, the 
warning voices of the prophets were raised, and 
we hear the cry: *' What doth the Lord re- 
quire of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy 
and to walk humbly before thy God ? '* That is, 
the sacrifice which is pleasing to God is not 
fruit, wealth, the blood of animals — these are only 
symbols — but righteous acts and holy character. 
The revelation of God as the forgiving Father 
culminates in our Lord Jesus Christ and in his 
supreme message : *' If we confess our sins He 
is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to 
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'* Men had 
asked, *' What shall we do that we may appease 
the powers above? *' To stifle remorse they had 
gone on pilgrimages, given their choicest treas- 
ures, even slain their children with their own 
hands, yet had found no peace. But from the 
time when the Hebrews were chosen until the 
cross was lifted one truth shines with ever clearer 
radiance : — God is not a Being who conditions 
forgiveness on suffering; the sacrifice that is 
acceptable to him is repentance, turning away 



WffA T IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE / 5 I 

from evil, a new spirit and a clean heart. And 
so when men ask, What shall we do that we may 
escape from the consequences of sin? the Divine 
word is, You cannot escape. If you trust to 
yourself you must go on suffering forever, but if 
you turn away from your sin unto the Living God 
** He is faithful and just to forgive,'' and will in 
due time remove even the evil desire. You 
might as well try to get the color out of a sun- 
beam as the thought of forgiveness out of either 
the Old Testament or the New. Whatever may 
be the result of critical inquiry concerning the 
structure of the Book, the great voice with which 
the Bible closes sounds on forever: — *' Whoso- 
ever will, let him come, and take of the water of 
life freely." 

The Bible is the Book of Righteousness. Its 
offer of forgiveness never for a moment obscures 
its emphasis upon right living. All its teach- 
ing bends toward the perfection of character. 
The Hebrew bowed before Jehovah and cried, 
** Holy, Holy, Holy"; Isaiah in his vision saw 
the Lord, and heard the seraphim crying one to 
another, ** Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of 
Hosts ; the whole earth is full of his glory " ; and 
the Master, when he was condensing the whole 
duty of man into one never-to-be-forgotten sen- 
tence, said, '' Be ye holy, as the Lord your God is 
holy,** Men are always like the Deity they wor- 
ship. This idea of a holy God separated the 
Hebrews from all other nations. The Greeks^ not- 



52 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

withstanding the splendor of their literary culture 
and artistic development, believed in gods who 
were immoral, cruel, heartless, vindictive, despica- 
ble. The depravity of heathenism has been to 
think of God, or the gods, as possessed of few of 
the virtues and all of the vices of humanity. High 
above such degrading conceptions of Deity was 
lifted the ideal of the Hebrews. It has no finer 
illustration than in the Book of Job, whose music 
is keyed to the righteousness of God. Job's 
friends declare that he has sinned, and, therefore, 
is being punished ; but Job in conscious integrity 
refuses to believe in a Being who would punish 
one not guilty. He prays that he may die rather 
than give up his faith in a God of absolute 
justice. It has been said that the Book of Job 
shows us, not a man before the judgment-seat of 
God, but the Almighty before the judgment-seat 
of man. Job's cry has been echoed in Whittier's 
familiar lines : 

" The wrong that pains my soul below 
I dare not throne above." 

That glorious drama of God and man is no excep- 
tion in the Old Testament. Toward a life of 
righteousness all men are pointed. When they 
choose evil they are denounced. The mask is 
torn from the hypocrite Jacob, the beautiful gar- 
ments from the lecherous David ; even Solomon 
is shown to have lacked an appreciation of true 
wisdom ; and when the Perfect One appeared it 



WIIA T IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE ? 53 

was in the realization of perfect righteousness — 
** Who did no evil, in whose mouth was no guile ; 
who went about doing good, and the law of 
whose life was love." In the Bible bad men are 
frequently described, but never with approval ; 
infamous and cruel acts are recorded, but never 
commended ; and, if they are endured for a time, 
it is only that the higher end of justice and truth 
may be realized. That cannot be wrong, that 
cannot be from beneath, that cannot be simply 
human, which begins and ends in the holiness of 
God and the righteousness of man. 

The Bible is the Book of Life, This fact is 
the cause of much misconception. We are so ac- 
customed to think of books as made that it is 
hard to understand that they can grow. But the 
Bible is a growth rather than a mechanism. It 
contains no propositions, and nothing like a theo- 
logical system. There is not a hint that any one 
of its writers, not even the Apostle Paul, ever 
heard of such a thing as a logical process. A 
part of the Old Testament is a history of God's 
dealings with the race ; other parts record the 
utterances of prophets who spoke the words of 
God to the men of their time ; others still are 
hymns of praise and prayer — the rarest lyric 
music that ever broke upon human ears, voices of 
the day and voices of the night, cries of despair- 
ing spirits, longings for communion with the un- 
seen, hisses of execration and wails of despair, 
songs of confidence and hope. The music of the 



54 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

Old Testament was not made to order; it has 
come from the heart of man beneath the Spirit's 
touch Hke the water from the rock when struck 
by the wand of Moses ; it has sprung like the 
gushing of fountains from perennial springs. 
Other parts are condensations of the wisdom of 
the time, like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes ; at least 
one book is a great dramatic poem — at once a 
drama and an epic ; for Job has been fittingly 
called '' The Epic of the Inner Life." And then 
there are visions, wonderful openings from out of 
the darkness of the present into the splendor of 
the future. 

All this is in the Old Testament. When we 
come to the New each part is instinct with life. 
*'The life was the light of men." What human 
teachers would attempt to convey by prosy 
books the Divine Teacher has conveyed by a per- 
fect Man. The New Testament is the record of 
a life, and meditations on that life. Take away 
the life, and nothing remains. The Gospels 
describe the life in the flesh ; the Acts the begin- 
ning of that life after the body had been laid 
aside ; the Epistles are meditations on the same 
life as it grows in the midst of an effete and per- 
nicious civilization. 

To attempt to read the Bible as you would read 
a treatise on Ethics or Logic is to misunderstand 
its meaning. The lesson of Enoch is that those 
living to-day may walk with God ; and the lesson 
of the story of Joseph is of the providence of 



WHA T IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE / 5 5 

God in human affairs. A literary critic might 
read the Psahns and find them only common 
poetry, but the man with a great joy or a crush- 
ing sorrow finds them voices from beyond the 
stars. One fact separates the Bible from all 
other books — it is occupied from beginning to 
end with hfe; it is written in terms of hfe ; its 
messages are conveyed through human beings 
and never in logical propositions. It is, there- 
fore, adapted to all classes ; the wisest can never 
exhaust life, and the poorest are always teach- 
able in its presence. 

Not only is the Bible vital ; it is also vitalizing. 
It inspires life. Those who turn to it to find 
specific rules for their duty will be disappointed, 
but those who come in contact with the spirit 
which dwells within it, as a spirit in a body, are 
unconsciously transformed. He who said that 
the Bible was to him not so much a book of rules 
as of germs, uttered a great truth ; for its words 
fall into hearts and grow, and are valuable not so 
much for what they teach as for what they sug- 
gest. It exhausts no subject ; its principles can 
be tested only by living them. No one knows 
what love is without loving, what goodness is 
without being good, what the peace of God is 
without resting in that peace. The messages of 
Scripture are conveyed through fallible men, in 
ordinary human language, and in that fact is their 
power. It would be a poorer book if it were 
more finished. If its writers had attempted to 



56 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

make it perfect it would have been meaningless 
to the common people. It is like nature, which 
philosophers study forever without exhausting, 
and which peasants enjoy forever without being 
weary. It is a book of life, and it inspires life. 
Those who are true to it are always loyal to con- 
science, righteousness, love and hope ; and every- 
thing which binds a man with golden chains to 
conscience, righteousness, love and hope, binds 
him to the throne of God. 

The Bible is the Book of Hope aiid Promise. In 
the beginning a small ray of light appears, which 
expands as it extends, until the prophecy — '' the 
seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's 
head" — finds its fulfilment in Him who broke 
the barriers of class, sect, nationality, and gave 
new emphasis to the truth that all rhen are the 
children of God, and brothers one of another. 
Throughout the Old Testament this note of hope 
is never lost. Prophets at times seem to utter 
voices of despair, but even Jeremiah beholds the 
approaching dawn, while the prophecies of Isaiah 
ring like anthems. They begin with denuncia- 
tions of wickedness, and end with visions of the 
time when nations shall learn war no more, when 
every man shall sit under his own vine and fig- 
tree, and there shall be none to molest and make 
afraid. The Master's message culminates in 
hope. The v/orld lies in guilt and sin, but he 
will break the power of sin. Death casts its pall 
over a despairing race, but he declares that the 



IVHA T IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE ? 57 

universe is the Father's House, and that dying is 
only going from one room to another in the in- 
finite palace. His words are taken up by the 
Apostle, and we hear them echoing among the 
heights of his transcendent chapter — '' Death is 
swallowed up in victory *' ; while the canon closes 
with the most splendid and inspiring glimpses of 
a time in which there will be no more sorrow and 
no more pain ; where the Hand that lights the 
stars and leads the constellations, wipes away all 
tears; and where all beings live and see in love, 
as now we live and see in light. I say without 
fear of contradiction, there never was another 
book so full of hope as the Bible. Even Job 
catches glimpses of the Daysman — the Mediator 
— through whom he can approach the Almighty; 
and his question, "• If a man die shall he live 
again?" is more than inquiry — it is the faint 
but eager assertion of a truth dimly but surely 
seen. 

Read the Bible : become saturated with it : 
take its words concerning God, humanity, the 
forgiveness of sins, and what comes after death, 
and then be a pessimist if you can ! The Scrip- 
tures represent all things as moving toward 
higher and finer conditions. The processes may 
be slow, but the triumph is sure. The Bible is 
the world's Book of Hope. 

The Bible \\3.s /es?is Christ in it. We believe 
in the Bible because Jesus Christ is in its pages. 
Adopt any theory of the structure of the Old and 



58 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

New Testaments that you please ; imagine that 
Moses, or some one else, wrote the Pentateuch ; 
that there was one Isaiah, or a dozen ; that John 
wrote the Gospel which bears his name, or that 
it was written by an unknown Alexandrian ; let 
all these theories have whatever weight may 
belong to them, let the analysis go on — what differ- 
ence does it make with the contents of the Scrip- 
ture ? The Old Testament points toward the 
Coming One, and the New Testament is a record 
of the One who has come. Suppose the story of 
Jesus is a fiction — what then ? Then a fiction is 
the mightiest power that ever broke upon the life 
of men. If Jesus Christ had his origin in the 
minds of some obscure Judaean fishermen, then 
those Judaean fishermen were the greatest men 
that ever lived, since they have created for the 
world its Saviour — nay, they have created its 
God. Whether Jesus is a fiction or a reality he 
is the world's Saviour, and is gradually bringing 
in a higher and better order. His power on life 
is independent of the question whether he is fact 
or fiction. 

But the reality of his life no intelligent man 
questions. Doubtless there are many untrue tra- 
ditions about him, and possibly some have found 
their way into the Gospels — what does it matter? 
One colossal character rises in the midst of the 
Bible and casts his light over all the centuries. 
There has been one Man concerning whom crit- 
icism is dumb; One has lived a faultless life; 



WHA T IS LEFT OF THE BIBLE ? 59 

One has proved that righteousness is possible ; 
One has taught that love is the highest law ; One 
has brought answers to the questions of human- 
ity which perfectly satisfy all our most eager and 
persistent inquiries ; One has revealed God as 
Father ; One has said that the law of righteous- 
ness is the law of love ; One has declared in a 
voice which the world has heard and heeded that 
all sins are already pardoned, and that whosoever 
will may enter into the possession of forgiveness ; 
One with unsandaled feet has walked through 
the valley of the shadow of death and come up 
into immortal life radiant and triumphant. 
Doubt may stand before him and question. 
Timidity may say, *' Oh, if it were only true ! " 
UnbeHef may say, '' We will have none of him.** 
But still he remains, filling both Testaments, 
gradually becoming ** the master-light ** of all our 
seeing and the master-thought of all our think- 
ing, lifting human hearts out of gloom and de- 
spair, and opening before all the gates of hope, of 
peace, of "- far-off infinite bliss/' He is making 
all things new, bringing in a better social order, 
creating new States, giving new meaning to the 
long-forgotten doctrine of Brotherhood, and lead- 
ing all men and nations to things above. 

We are in the midst of times which try men's 
souls. Investigation is pushing itself into all 
realms ; science is knocking at all doors ; there is 
no more a Holy of Holies in all the temple of 
nature ; things which have been held sacred are 



6o OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

fading as the leaves ; old traditions are disappear- 
ing ; opinions and beliefs which have been sup- 
posed to be important, no longer have authority. 
No wonder that many are asking, Where will all 
this end ? There are even those foolish enough 
to say, *^Let us cling to what we have had: let 
us shut out the light because if we let in the day 
something we have held sacred will disappear/* 

I bring to you a different message. Remember 
that nothing true can ever be weakened by truth 
and light. Let in the light ! let it penetrate 
every dark place ! Truth has nothing to fear 
from investigation : only error is cowardly. 
Darkness never loves light. And while the proc- 
ess of criticism goes on, remember that whatever 
may be found true concerning the structure of 
the Bible, and the authorship of its books, it will 
remain forever — the Book that is filled with God, 
as the bush before Moses was filled with flame ; 
the Book of Forgiveness, making plain the way 
out of sin into life and peace ; the Book of Right- 
eousness, showing that all things in the heavens 
are in the hands of perfect Goodness, and that all 
things on the earth move toward '' a far off Di- 
vine event" ; the Book of Life, written in terms 
of life so clearly that little children can under- 
stand it and sages never transcend it, whose 
words linger in the memory like seeds in the soil 
of springtime, and grow and bear fruit in lives of 
truthfulness and love ; the Book of Hope, in 
whose pages humanity is represented as moving 



Wl/A T /S LEFT OF THE BIBLE ? 6l 

ever toward a brighter and clearer day, in which 
the life of man is not described as ending in ob- 
Hvion and nothingness, but growing in beauty 
and power, deathless as the Being from whom it 
came. And this Bible, which is the Book of God, 
the Book of Righteousness, the Book of Forgive- 
ness, the Book of Life, the Book of Hope, is 
finally the Book which thrills and throbs with 
the radiant presence of Him who said: ** I am 
come that ye might have life, and that ye might 
have it more abundantly '* ; who said, '^ Him that 
Cometh to me I will in no wise cast out " ; who 
said, '' A new commandment I give unto you, 
that ye love one another as I have loved you " ; 
who said, '* In my Father's House are many 
mansions ; if it were not so I would have told 
you." 

That Book is the world's book : it belongs in 
the list of elemental facts, like the suns and the 
stars. We can trust it while we live, trust it 
when we die, and we shall find its messages all 
true when we have gone through death into the 
clearer light and the cloudless day. 



IV. 
THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 



" Whether we be young or old, 

Our destiny, our being's heart and home, 
Is with infinity, and only there." 

Wordsworth. 

'* The grave is but a little hill, yet from it how small do the 
great affairs of life look, how great the small ! " — Tholuck. 

" Life is short, death is certain, and the world to come is ever- 
lasting." — John Henry Newman. 

" The disposition to disparage the • personal life,' and let it go 
as an * individual accident of the universal ' probably arises from 
an unconscious confounding of it with the bodily form : on the 
break-up of which the spirit was supposed to have no retaining 
walls, but to escape as a vital breath and mingle with the general 
air." — James Martineau. 

" How pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what Divine affections bold. 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead ! " 

Tennyson. 

" If a man die shall he live again ? " — Job xiv. 14. 



IV. 

The Immortal Life. 

In one of the chapels of Westminster Abbey 
are buried the remains of a noble woman. Year 
after year loving hands have placed upon the 
cold marble on which her name is chiselled beauti- 
ful and fragrant flowers. I have never looked 
upon those flowers without feeling that they 
were both a tribute to the one who had gone 
and a silent, and almost resistless, argument in 
favor of continuance of life. While she was on 
the earth she often walked through the chapels of 
the dim old Abbey, for her home was almost 
beneath its roof; and yet the Abbey stands, and 
will for generations to come, but Lady Stanley, 
who won her way into human hearts by benefi- 
cent ministries, '' and led all to things above," is 
supposed by many to lie beneath the stone that 
closes her tomb. Then a tree is more enduring 
than a heart: then those who make the life and 
beauty of a house are less than the house itself. 

On a table in a parlor is a pliotograph, and 



66 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

before it a vase of fresh flowers. On a wall is a 
large portrait, and its frame is twined with a liv- 
ing vine. The flowers and vine are more than 
tributes to the past, they are witnesses to a faith, 
however feeble, that those who have gone still 
live and do not refuse these tributes of affection. 
And what a strange thing is a vase of flowers 
before a photograph ! The photograph may last 
for a century, or a thousand years, and not one 
lineament of the face disappear ; and is man less 
enduring than his photograph? Does he die; 
and does his portrait which the sun prints on a 
piece of perishable paper have almost the quality 
of immortality ? 

Job had seen everything go. An evil disease 
had taken hold of him ; his friends had denounced 
him as a sinner ; he had nothing left but the con- 
sciousness of integrity; he had even prayed that 
he might die rather than be untrue to his faith in 
a just and righteous God ; — when, suddenly, a 
thought flashed upon him : *' If a man die shall 
he live again ?*' That is more than a question : 
it is a faint but real affirmation — a voice declaring 
that while there is no explanation of life as it is, 
if we may believe that it continues, all its myste- 
ries may be explained. That old poem might have 
been written in this nineteenth century with 
scarcely any change. It is a profound and true 
study of human life, the problems of which in one 
time are the problems in all time. Other things 
have changed. More is known of the universe 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE, 6/ 

than ever before. Progress has been multiform. 
The very stars have found voices ; the light has 
become vocal ; the secrets of the deep seas and 
adamantine rocks are being read ; but in the nine- 
teenth century after Christ there is no more 
known concerning life and its mysteries than was 
known in the nineteenth century before Christ. 
The question of Job is world-wide and world-old. 
I bring to you no new light, but rather gather up 
a few scattered rays and allow them to flash their 
gleams on this endless study. 

Jesus came to a people ready to welcome death 
as the only way to escape from the miseries of 
existence. He never recognized death. Before 
he healed the daughter of Jairus he said, ''• She is 
not dead, but sleepeth ; *' and when he came to 
the grave of Lazarus he said, ^* Our friend Lazarus 
sleepeth.*' His last words were, *' Father, into thy 
hands I commend my spirit.*' His answer to 
Job's question is a strong and unhesitating affirm- 
ative. For a moment, however, let us turn from 
our Master and listen to other witnesses. 

The immanence of God gives authority to the 
voices that speak in the human soul. If God 
pervades his universe and is in humanity, then the 
voices of the human soul, when they can be heard, 
have the authority of the word of God; and truth 
which can be found anywhere, even if not written 
in the Scriptures, is not to be ruled out as belong- 
ing to an inferior realm, but it, too, comes to us 
with Divine sanction. I do not feel that the 



68 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

only light upon the mystery of death is found in 
the teachings of our Master. He treats the sub- 
ject as he treats the idea of God. The existence 
of God is presumed, never proved, in the New 
Testament. In the same way from beginning to 
end Jesus presumes continuance of life. The 
importance of that phrase, '* If it were not so I 
would have told you,'* cannot be exaggerated. 
It recognizes other witnesses whose testimony is 
entitled to reverent consideration. To their 
utterances we now turn. 

The hypothesis of future life makes possible a 
solution of the mystery of this life. This thought 
is prominent in the Book of Job. It has forced 
itself into the thinking of all time. The wicked 
succeed and the good fail ; the bad are exalted 
and the pure are cast down ; the vicious have 
palaces and the virtuous live in hovels ; Domitian 
wears the purple and Epictetus is lame and a 
slave ; Nero sways the sceptre and Jesus hangs 
on the cross. Such sights are not universal, but 
they are so common as to confuse and confound 
our thinking. Why is sin allowed? Why are 
millions born into conditions which necessitate 
evil? One little outcast child — with neither 
father nor mother, no school but the street, no 
home but the brothel, no companionship but that 
of thieves— is an awful mystery. Job could see 
no meaning in life. He was ready to die, until 
there came to him the thought of a life beyond 
the grave. If there is life beyond, he seems to say, 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE, 69 

then what now is wrong may be righted. What 
helped him, illuminates the same mystery for us. 
Evolution points to a perfected race in far-off 
ages, a race which may sometime be immortal, 
but has no answer when we ask, How about 
those living now, who will never know anything 
of that perfected race ? Are they any more than 
the blossoms which never come to fruitage, and 
the weak who go down in the struggle of life? 
There is no possible solution of the mystery 
except on the supposition of continuance of being. 
Professor Fiske well says at this point *' faith 
must appear and bridge the gulf." 

If life endures, there is a motive for the devel- 
opment and exercise of the noblest of human 
faculties. Our best faculties become free and effi- 
cient only through discipline and struggle. The 
noblest who ever lived was '' made perfect 
through suffering." But now the question rises — 
and it is intensely practical — if the best and 
noblest can be realized only through struggle, sac- 
rifice, sorrow, and can be used but a little time, 
** Is the game worth the candle ? " Would Raphael 
have painted the Sistine Madonna if he had 
known that as soon as its divine beauty was per- 
fected a remorseless hand would tear it into a 
thousand shreds ? Would Germany have finished 
that almost ideal temple which lifts its splendor 
on the banks of the Rhine had it been known 
that, within five years after the crosses were 
placed upon the spires of Cologne, the whole 



JO OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

mass would tumble into ruins? Why should any 
seek improvement, with its accompaniments of 
anguish and agony, if death is at the end of the 
way? Why should any try by long and painful 
^culture to perfect characters which, almost as 
soon as the process is ended, by a ruthless fate 
will be utterly and irremediably annihilated? 
But if life continues then there will be a sphere 
for the use of those faculties. Man's passion for 
advancement, culture, perfection, is explicable 
only on the hypothesis of unending life. While 
I fully believe that there is more happiness in 
virtue than vice, in culture than in ignorance and 
neglect, I cannot fail to recognize also that, theo- 
rize as we may, to most the motive for improve- 
ment will go if all hope for the future is lost. 

If death ends all there is no explanation of 
the fact that most die at the very time when 
they are best fitted to live. The list of great 
ones who have fallen in the midst of illus- 
trious promise is long indeed. Shelley, whose 
music was like that of his own skylark, fin- 
ished his singing at twenty-nine: Keats *^ felt 
the daisies growing over him" at twenty-two ; 
Frederick Robertson was only thirty-eight when 
his voice was hushed: Professor Clifford had 
ceased his investigations at thirty-four: Sister 
Dora was only in middle-age when death claimed 
her. More than one building at Harvard, Yale, 
Amherst and Princeton, is a memorial building. 
Young men pursue their studies, give brilliant 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE, 7 1 

promise, and just as great things are expected of 
them strength fails and tragedy ends the farce. 
A fireman climbs a lofty building to save a child. 
He is young, vigorous, brave, and full of hope. 
The child is saved, and the man lost when most 
proving his right to live. 

What is true of youth is also true of age. Old 
age by no means implies decadence of power. 
The Apostle John did his best work after he was 
seventy. The controlling statesmen of Europe 
are nearly all sixty years of age, or over : — Cap- 
rivi is sixty-one, Crispi over seventy, Bismarck 
seventy-seven, Salisbury seventy, Gladstone over 
eighty, Castellar sixty, and Pope Leo not far 
from eighty-two. Of modern historians, Ban- 
croft and Von Dollinger continued to write when 
they were far beyond eighty ; Bryant wrote his 
*^ Flood of Years " when he was eighty-two ; and 
Longfellow was only about ten years younger 
when his muse rose to its loftiest flight in the 
Alumni Poem at Bowdoin College entitled, 
Morituri Saliitamiis, England^s Laureate is sing- 
ing as sweetly as ever, at eighty-two, and our 
own Whittier, about the same age, like the Apos- 
tle on Patmos is still " in 'the spirit,'* and still 
sounding the praises of the '^ Eternal Goodness.'* 
These men will not die because they have ceased 
to be of service to the world, but death will find 
them with their spirits' eyes undimmed and the 
strength of their spirit unabated. If there is con- 
tinuance of beino^, those who seem to die onlv 



72 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

change their sphere of activity : but if there is 
no continuance of being, the brightest, finest, 
most splendidly equipped of our race drop into 
nothingness at the moment they are best fitted to 
be a blessing and a joy. To believe that, is to 
deny every voice that speaks in the human soul, 
to put shackles on reason, and to say that that 
which seems impossible is the only reality. 

If there is no life beyond death, we must 
believe that humanity is created for no high pur- 
pose. There can be no noble purpose if the 
grave is the end. If men are only like the drops 
in the river rushing toward Niagara, disappear- 
ing forever when the abyss is reached, why 
do any live? Live to love and be disappointed, 
to aspire and fail of achievement, to have a few 
blessings and then to lose them ; live long enough 
for dear ones to get entangled in our heart- 
strings and then have our heart-strin^rs torn to 
shreds ; live to build houses and plan for enjoy- 
ment and awake to find the dream broken ? But 
with Job's hypothesis the end is not yet. That 
which seems without purpose or plan moves 
toward a time in which there is opportunity for 
great things. If we live but to die, there is 
no possibility of an adequate purpose in any 
human being ; but if death is a sleep by which 
worn powers are refreshed that the new day may 
be the better enjoyed, all things fall into har- 
mony. 

Moreover, if life survives death the voices of 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 73 

the human soul prophesy wliat will be reahzed. 
What poet ever yet sang all the songs which he 
heard ? What painter ever painted all the pict- 
ures he has seen in the halls of his imagination? 
What musician ever thrilled the world with such 
harmonies as have swept into his consciousness 
when he has been alone with the seas and the 
stars? What philanthropist ever did all for the 
amelioration of man that he longed to do? 
What philosopher ever solved all his problems? 
What astronomer ever completed his explora- 
tions? Who ever truly loved without dreaming 
that love would spring a bridge over all abysses 
and follow its object through all spaces? Why 
are men afraid to die with guilty secrets uncon- 
fessed ? Even the vilest and most hardened have 
dreaded the dreams that might come in the sleep 
of death. Aspiration, love, conscience, remorse, 
are as real as stones and stars, and if there is no 
possibility of their satisfaction each human being 
is a living lie. But suppose life does continue — 
what pictures Raphael may have made since 
he left the earth ! What songs Milton, with his 
eyes open, may have sung! What music Mozart 
may have produced since the last wail of his 
Requiem sounded in his earthly ears ! Then love 
may claim its own everywhere ! 

If there is no future life a singer is less than 
his song, an artist inferior to his picture, an 
architect not so enduring as the building which 
he designs ; then Wagner's music draws thou- 



74 C^^'^^ WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

sands across tlie sea to Baireuth while Warner 
liimself has long ceased to exist ; then Peter's 
Dome will endure for countless generations but 
Michael Angelo is but formless dust : then his 
Dialogues will stimulate thought to the end of 
time, but Plato for thousands of years has been 
only a name ; then the Teacher of Nazareth is as 
dead as the cross upon which he was cruci- 
fied. If such things are true, nothing can be 
believed. But reason, conscience, aspiration, 
love, rise in indignant protest and declare that 
the thing made can not be greater than its 
maker. 

If the hypothesis of life beyond death is 
unfounded, the wisest and best of all times have 
believed in what has no reality. It can be 
affirmed that no thinker of first- rank whose 
writings are preserved ever argued against immor- 
tality. Dr. Hunger has well said : *' The master- 
minds have been strongest in their affirmations 
of it. We do not refer to those who receive it 
as a part of their religion. In weighing the 
value of the natural or instinctive belief, Augus- 
tine's faith does not count for so much as Cic- 
ero's, and Plato's outweighs Bacon's: Plutarch is 
a better witness than Chrysostom ; Montesquieu 
than Wesley; Franklin than Edwards; Emerson 
than Channing; Greg's hope is more significant 
than Bushneirs faith. All the great minds, often 
in spite of apparently counter-philosophies, draw 
near to the doctrine, and are eager to bear testi- 



THE IMMOirfAL LIFE. 75 

mony to it. Even John Stuart Mill, whose relig- 
ious nature was nearly extirpated by an atheistic 
education, does not say nay when the roll of the 
great intellects is called. Blanco White, another 
wanderer from the fold of faith, wrought into the 
form of a sonnet so perfect that we instinctively 
call it immortal, an argument, the force of which 
men will feel so long as * Hesperus leads the 
starry host ' : — 

* If light can thus deceive, 
Wherefore not life ? ' 

Wordsworth touched the high-water mark of 
the literature of the century in his ode on Immor- 
tality, and Tennyson's greatest poem is through- 
out exultant in the hope that ' Life shall live 
forevermore.' " "^ 

If there is no life beyond the grave, all moral 
and religious thought, too, has been on a false 
basis. The Greeks believed in immortality, and 
reared exquisitely, sculptured tombs to the 
memory of their loved ones. In it the Egyptians 
and Assyrians believed. It occupies a large place 
in all religions. It may be a question whether 
the Hindu Nirvana postulates continuance 
of consciousness, but, while so many scholars 
insist that it does, the Hindu faith cannot be 
considered an exception. All men and nations 
as far back as history goes have had some form 
of religion. Their religion has been their most 

* Freedoin of Faith ^'^. 2^\. 



76 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

sacred possession. It has embodied all that was 
dear of hope, aspiration, faith ; and in the heart 
of almost all forms of religion, from the baldest 
paganism to the most exalted Christianity, has 
been belief in life surviving death. 

It may be said that no one of these arguments 
is strong enough in itself to be conclusive, but 
when all are woven into one we have a cumulative 
argument which has the strength of certainty, a 
chain which binds to the noblest life, the brightest 
hopes, and the grandest achievement. That the 
immortal life has not been demonstrated is most 
freely granted, and that at present demonstration 
seems to be forever impossible to those who are 
in the flesh ; but we have made a credible basis 
for faith : we have reached a point in which the 
only thing for a reasonable being to do is to live 
as if the immortal life had been mathematically 
proven. To take any other course would be an 
act of intellectual folly which would imply that 
reason had ceased to have weight. I close this 
part of the discussion with an impressive quota- 
tion from a book which in recent days has helped 
many to find a rational basis for faith in the 
immortal life : 

** From the first dawning of life we see all 
things working together toward one mighty goal, 
the evolution of the most exalted spiritual quali- 
ties which characterize humanity. Has all this 
work been done for nothing ? Is it all ephemeral, 
all a bubble that bursts, a vision that fades? On 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE, 'J'J 

such a view, the riddle of the universe becomes a 
riddle without a meaning. The more thoroughly 
we comprehend that process of evolution by 
which things have come to be what they are, the 
more we are likely to feel that to deny the ever- 
lasting persistence of the spiritual element in 
man is to rob the whole process of its meaning. 
It goes far toward putting us to permanent 
intellectual confusion, and I do not see that any 
one has as yet alleged, or is ever likely to allege, 
a sufficient reason for our accepting so dire an 
alternative. For my own part, therefore, I 
believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the 
sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths 
of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the 
reasonableness of God's work.'* ^ 

But what is thus prophesied is not mere exist- 
ence : it is life. Existence alone is not desirable. 
What our Lord promised was not continuance of 
existence, but fullness of life. He said: *' I am 
come that ye might have life, and more abun- 
dantly.'* Job would have derived no comfort 
from the idea of continued existence only, for that 
might have meant added misery. But because 
the future offered an opportunity of improvement, 
he hailed its suggestion with gladness. Exist- 
ence tied to sorrow and living death is hateful ; 
but that toward which the Apostle pointed was 
life which gives promise of infinite joy, for he 

* John Fiske. Destiny of Man, ^^^^ 113-116. 



78 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

said: ^' This corruptible must put on incorrup- 
tion : this mortal must put on immortality.'* 
Life signifies health, growth, beauty, power, fruit- 
fulness. In the Scriptures it never has any other 
meaning. Spiritual life has one antithesis, and 
that is death. It was not worth while for our 
Master to come, if all that is before man is the 
possibility of continuing to exist and think. If 
life and existence are synonymous, the Buddhists 
reason wisely when they say that there is nothing 
so desirable as cessation of being, since existence 
is the cause of sorrow. The word resurrection 
carries with it a better significance — the rising of 
one who has been down; newness of strength and 
freshness of vigor. It is a hint of a glorious dawn 
following a dismal night. The Greeks spoke of 
the day rising from the bed of the niglit. The 
teachings of our Lord are in harmony with the 
prophecies of experience, and the voices that 
sybil-like speak their oracles in the soul : and all 
add emphasis to the words of the Apostle, '' It is 
sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.*' 
Life continues, with all its possibilities. 

Life always moves toward blessing. If by any 
chance it is deflected, and becomes ugly and evil, 
it remains in that form but a little while, for its 
tendency is to revert to its original type. There- 
fore we argue that if life continues it carries with 
it by its very nature the possibility and necessity 
of working itself clear from restrictions, limita- 
tions, and corruptions. The experience of the 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE, 79 

past, the philosophy of the ages, the profoundest 
poetry, the loftiest utterances of sage and seer, all 
accord with the simple and beautiful declaration 
of the Master, '' If it were not so, I would have 
told you." 

Life prophesies its own continuance ; the his- 
tory of thought utters the same prophecy; the 
religions of the world have added their witness — 
death is the freeing, not the ending, of life. But 
now the question rises. Have we any knowledge 
of what that life is? From that strange land for 
which all long have any returned, giving informa- 
tion of what it is like ? Have human feet ever 
trod the slopes of those mountains, or human 
eyes gazed upon the spires of that city? The 
Bible is full of hints of the future, but contains 
little of revelation. We catch glimpses of glory, 
as light falls through rifts in the clouds on far- 
away heights, bat that is all. Christ was more 
anxious that men should be in possession of the 
deathless life than able to satisfy curiosity con- 
cerning its nature. Nevertheless there are a few 
hints which may well be studied. 

*' In my Father*s house are many mansions.** 
As in a palace there are many rooms, so in the 
universe there are many spheres, and the children 
of God move at the Father's will from one to 
another. Dying, then, is not going into an abyss, 
but passing from one room to another in an 
infinite palace, and death is the door between the 
rooms. 



8o OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

The example of our Lord teaches us that 
resurrection is in a form, for the risen Jesus was 
known to Mary in the garden, to Thomas in the 
upper room, and to the disciples by the lake. 
He even used a human voice. He seemed to 
walk, as on the way to Emmaus, This teaches 
that heaven may not be beyond the stars, but in 
the very houses in which we live, and along the 
streets through which we move. Heaven may 
not be separated from us by distances, but by 
qualities: it may mean not so much a change of 
locality as of character. The appearance of the 
Master after death teaches that spirit is inde- 
pendent of physical barriers, for he appeared to 
Thomas in the upper room, and disappeared as if 
there were no physical obstructions in the walls. 

After he had risen the Master continued his 
ministry. He talked with the disciples, gave 
them messages concerning his work, and to Peter 
he said : *' Feed my sheep ; feed my lambs.'* 
Jesus was the typical man. If he rose from the 
dead, we, too, shall rise : if he lives in a form, we, 
too, shall live in a form ; if his spiritual body is 
independent of physical barriers, we, too, shall be 
independent of them ; if after death he ministered 
to those who were left behind, then the spaces 
by which we are surrounded may be filled with 
ministering spirits. The heathen often caught 
dim glimpses of glorious truth. They spoke of 
"tutelary deities,** whom they believed to be 
guardian spirits. The truth beneath their rude 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 8 1 

conception was clearly taught by our Lord when 
in ministry he returned to the earth. We nnay 
not be the only beings who walk these streets 
and gather in these churches. The appearances 
of Jesus after his resurrection teach that those 
who on earth had within them the slightest germ 
of the Divine Life, according as that life has 
grown, have followed in the footsteps of Him 
who solved the doubts of Thomas, spoke a loving 
word to poor bewildered Mary, and, after his 
denial, put upon Peter the burden of a blessed 
service. 

That life in the spiritual body is free from 
sorrow and pain is taught in the seventh chapter 
of the Revelation, in words whose music some- 
times seems the sweetest that ever broke upon 
human ears : ** There shall be no more pain, and 
no more sorrow, and no sin, and no more death, 
and God shall wipe away all tears, and the Lamb 
shall be the light thereof.'* 

But may it not be that humanity moves from 
the sorrow of the present into the joy of a future 
which is limited, and that at last death will be 
the end? We cannot enter that realm, but our 
Master has declared that life is everlasting. 
Moreover, it is the nature of all good things to 
endure : only evil tends toward death. If, now, 
we can think of life independent, and free from 
baleful influences and agencies, it is easy to 
believe that the word of our Lord was true w^hen 
he spoke of the everlasting life. But there are 



82 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES. 

questions enough in the present without troubling 
ourselves about the details of the future. In the 
meantime let us rejoice that the darkness of this 
night breaks into the splendor of a new day, and 
believe that no day will ever dawn which will close 
in endless night. 

If you ask me once more, why I believe all this, 
I am not slow to reply : I believe it because it is 
reasonable, because any other hypothesis is 
unreasonable; because it is an insult to human 
powers to think that every voice which speaks 
within our souls utters a long and persistent lie. 
I believe it because it is right that we should take 
counsel of the best within us rather than of the 
worst. It is more reasonable to rest in our hopes 
than in our doubts, to have faith in things which 
point toward blessing than to believe that there 
is no purpose in creation, and that we, and the 
universe, are driven hither and yon as drift on the 
ocean, or leaves in a tornado. I believe in the 
immortal life because nothing else is reasonable. 
There are a thousand questions which cannot be 
answered. In vain we reach for parallels in the 
present, forgetting that the present can furnish 
no line by which to measure the future. I 
believe in the immortal life because nothing else 
satisfies. We are not like stars without orbits. 
We are not made to sing songs that will make 
music after we are nothing. We are not here to 
build houses which endure while we dissolve in 
dust. We are not here to love, aspire, grow 



THE IMMORTAL LIFE. 83 

strong and noble, and then see that it would have 
been just as well to have reached after nothing, 
to have hated as to have loved, because all things 
move into one bottomless abyss. I believe in the 
immortal life because it is the noblest and most 
inspiring view of the life which now is. It makes 
the best and happiest men, and it will make the 
best and happiest world. That cannot be 
altogether unreal which moves toward the highest 
happiness and the supreme welfare. Only grant 
the future, and all the sorrows of time may be 
righted, all the inequalities and injustices of the 
present may prove to be ministers of blessing 
rather than of cursing. That which makes the 
best world is the best faith, call it what you will. 
I believe in the immortal life because the noblest 
Being who ever walked this earth, whose whole 
career was instinct with truth and love, who 
proved his right to speak for God by his likeness 
to God, has declared that we are in our Father's 
house, that what we call death is only sleep, and 
that those who rest in that sleep will in the 
morning awaken in a brighter room to sweeter 
service. 

If, then, after all we are mistaken ; if the great 
and the good in the past — the greatest and best, 
let us say — have believed a lie ; if the voices 
which speak within our own souls utter a lie, and 
we are mistaken and death ends all — what then? 
Well, there is only one answer: even if it be 
error, it is a blissful one. Better to live sweet 



84 OLD WINE: NEW BOTTLES, 

and noble lives with so blessed an illusion than 
to grope aimlessly in the darkness, without light 
or hope. But we are not mistaken. The faint 
intimation which flashed upon the wondering 
vision of Job has grown into full-orbed light as it 
falls upon our faith and love. We have heard 
His voice speaking to us who said, "■ I am the 
resurrection and the life.'' We have seen men, 
buried in the grave of sin, rise in newness of life 
on the earth. We have seen those whom we 
loved go down into the dark valley with songs 
upon their lips. We are seeing in our time the 
curtain that separates the visible from the 
invisible grow thinner and thinner, until no one 
would be surprised if it should be rent in twain. 
We will not believe that life, history, human 
thought, all the world's religions, all the world's 
bibles, and our Master Jesus Christ, are all 
deceivers, and that a falsehood is at the base of 
all things. We wull rather trust, hope, love, 
aspire, and work on toward that which is best, 
assured that by and by the day will dawn and the 
shadows flee away ; that we shall see Him and be 
like him ; that the light affliction which is but for 
a moment will work a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory. We will keep near to 
Him through life, and through death, until with 
Him we realize the fullness of his words — Resur- 
rection, and Life ! 



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